The purpose of this course is to introduce you to current global challenges in conservation and development, including changes in both sectors. This course will inspire you to rethink assumptions to address global challenges in conservation and development, and introduce you to new models and approaches that harness technological, behavioral, and financial innovation. This course will equip you with the insights, skills and approaches necessary to successfully overcome these obstacles. In addition, this course will provide participants with the tools, models, and approaches to address global grand challenges in conservation and development, to question fundamental assumptions, and to create and execute new solutions. Course participants will be trained in the processes around innovation and design to address global grand challenges. This includes content focused on constructing innovation pipelines, principals of design and engineering unique to the developing world and to conservation (Design for the Other 90%), on harnessing and developing disruptive technologies, principles of behavior and marketing, and on overcoming the challenges with setting up social ventures.
The course format will facilitate the development of a global community of innovators who will help solve the current and future grand challenges our planet faces in conservation and development, and will encourage thinking about how to do so that rethinks traditional assumptions and approaches within both conservation and development. This course will leverage the incredible idealism and interest in social entrepreneurship, design, and innovation among the millennials, in the US and abroad, and is intended to appeal to those interested in the maker movement. It also seeks to engage individuals in the developing world who are closest to the problems of conservation and development, who would benefit from the approaches taught in the course, and who can leverage their own knowledge of local culture.

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Behavioral Innovation, Financial Innovation, and Design

Behavior is the cutting edge of adaptation. It can be the fastest way to meaningful change and also the biggest barrier against it. Behavioral innovations such as incentives and rewards, harnessing competition and gamification, knowledge gaps, social pressure and networks, fear, self-identity and self-worth, and altruism provide powerful new tools to accelerate change and break down barriers. Financial innovations are a subset of behavior change. They include pay-for-performance mechanisms such as direct payments for conservation, advance market commitments, social impact bonds, conservation finance, conservation credit trading platforms, as well as harnessing new tools and platforms such as crowdfunding, microinsurance, microcredits, peer-to-peer lending, pay-as-you-go mechanisms, and franchise schemes. Finally, design is the application of behavioral science and anthropology to products and systems. When done well, design can integrate the needs of people and species; the possibilities of technology; and the demand for impact, sustainability, and scalability. <p> This week's content is an introduction to new models of behavioral and financial innovation, and design theory. This module features lectures and interviews with Asher Jay, a creative conservationist who uses art and marketing to end wildlife trafficking, Krista Donaldson, the CEO of Design Revolution (D-Rev), and Ron Gonen, the cofounder of Recyclebank, a model of how behavior change, technology, and entrepreneurship can solve environmental challenges.<p> To get started, view the video Design for Impact."</p>